Sunday, November 20, 2016

"The social media relationship between James Kelly and Stuart Campbell has broken down. Yet another reason for Humza to resign quite frankly."

Yes, it's true - after God knows how many years of following each other on Twitter and having a very amicable relationship, Stuart Campbell of Wings Over Scotland abruptly blocked me today. He had become increasingly angry after I challenged his claims that the opinion polls in the US presidential election were not especially inaccurate, and he eventually told me in trademark fashion to "f*** off". I have to say I find this a very sad development - over the years, I've backed him to the hilt over the totally unfounded allegations of misogyny and other assorted forms of bigotry, and to be fair he's also stood up for me on a number of occasions. But throughout my near-decade of writing this blog, I've always felt very strongly that it's important never to let the 'patronage' of a leading blogger deter me in any way from pointing out when I think that person has got something wrong. I did it with Mike Small in January. I've actually done it a few times with Stuart before (for example in a debate about the morality of the Hiroshima bombing), and he has always previously reacted in a very constructive and mature way. For some reason I simply don't understand, today was different.

I wasn't planning to make any further comment on the exchange, but the nature of having a dispute with someone who has several times as many followers as you do is that some of those people pile in after the event, demanding that you answer certain points. So, free of the 140-character restraint on Twitter, here is my response.

One thing I've felt about Stuart for quite some time is that he fundamentally misunderstands the nature of the standard 3% margin of error in public opinion polls. I seem to recall that after last year's polling disaster at the UK general election, he argued that the polls hadn't really failed, because they averaged out at a level-pegging race, which was more or less within the margin of error of the commanding 7% Tory lead we ended up with. But that simply isn't how it's supposed to work. The margin of error takes account of one type of error, and one type only - namely error caused by random sampling variation. It assumes that everything else - demographic targets, weighting, etc - will be absolutely bang-on correct. What that means in practical terms is that, although small errors in individual polls will always be commonplace, they should be distributed in a fairly random way. If, for example, the polls had been correct to within the margin of error at the general election (leaving aside the complicating factor of a possible late swing), we might have seen a pattern in the final polls along the following lines...

Poll 1 : Tory lead of 5%Poll 2 : Tory lead of 11%Poll 3 : Tory lead of 5%Poll 4 : Tory lead of 7%Poll 5 : Tory lead of 6%Poll 6 : Tory lead of 8% Poll 7 : Tory lead of 3%Poll 8 : Tory lead of 8%Poll 9 : Tory lead of 6%Poll 10 : Tory lead of 5%

In that hypothetical example, six out of ten polls underestimate the Tory lead, three overestimate it, and just one is absolutely correct. That's the sort of thing that can easily happen by random chance. But what you're NOT seeing there is every single poll underestimating the Tories, and almost all of them doing it by an amount that is either at the extreme end of the margin of error, or that exceeds the margin of error. According to Wikipedia, and excluding a Survation poll that conveniently only appeared after the election result was already known, these were the actual last ten polls of the 2015 campaign -

Not only did all of those polls underestimate the Tory lead, but the majority of them did so by slightly more than the margin of error. That is not the sort of pattern that is remotely likely to occur by random chance - which tells us that the error wasn't primarily caused by the sampling variation allowed for by the margin of error, and that significant methodological mistakes were probably to blame. (Again, that conclusion leaves aside the possibility of late swing, but it's probably correct to do so, given that YouGov's on-the-day poll was wildly inaccurate.)

What Stuart would say, and what he effectively did say eighteen months ago, is that because on average the final polls 'only' underestimated the Tory lead by around six or seven points, they were basically accurate to within the margin of error (ie. with Labour overestimated by around 3% and the Tories underestimated by around 3%). That just doesn't stack up. The 3% margin of error only applies to each individual poll. Random statistical noise should to a decent extent balance itself out over a large batch of polls, leaving you with a much smaller error. In my hypothetical example above, the polling average underestimates the Tory lead by only 1% after rounding, which is much more typical of what you'd expect if the polls were essentially 'right'.

In my exchange with Stuart today, I was only really interested in disputing his points about margin of error, but he tried to sidetrack me into discussing other factors - in particular that polls are snapshots not predictions, and that the US presidential election is not decided by the national popular vote. Technically, those are reasonable points to make, but when you put them together to try to construct a case that the polls didn't really get it wrong, you do start to get into the realms of the fantastical. According to the final polls, Hillary Clinton had a national lead of around 4% going into election day. It is simply not credible to claim that Trump could have won the election if that had actually been the result. In any case, the possibility of a freak outcome in the electoral college is precisely what the state polls are there to warn us about - and they were even more inaccurate than the national polls!

As far as very late swing is concerned, yes, that can happen, but it won't generally be on an enormous scale, and it should show up in the exit polls (the only polls that are genuinely predictions, rather than shapshots of opinion). As you can see HERE, the exit polls pointed to a clear Clinton victory in the electoral college. In the vast majority of states polled, Trump was underestimated. In almost half of the states, he was underestimated by a greater amount than the margin of error could - even theoretically - explain.

No matter how big the error, it's always possible to attempt to cobble together some kind of tenuous narrative that gives the polling firms a free pass. If a 40% Labour lead vanishes into thin air on polling day, you can argue that 20% of voters may have changed their minds at the very last second. But in the real world, there comes a point where you have to accept that the emperor has no clothes, and that the polls were just plain wrong. They were wrong on Netanyahu, they were wrong on Cameron, they were wrong on Brexit, and they were wrong on Trump. As I acknowledged the other week, everything is relative, and I would still pay much more heed to polls than to other so-called 'predictors' such as betting and financial markets. But as of this moment, polls are plainly nowhere near as reliable as they are supposed to be.

132 comments:

Campbell IS a bigot. Not only that, he stupidly pedals old British propaganda against the Gaelic language and culture. Old British nationalist bigotry developed when the UK was forming into one state and seeking to 'other'/eradicate any competing identities. "Let’s start off by losing some more friends. This site has no time for the Gaelic lobby. The obsolete language spoken by just 0.9% of Scotland’s population might be part of the nation’s “cultural heritage”, but so were burning witches and replacing Highlanders with sheep and we don’t do those any more either....Non-primary native languages are a tool whose main utility in practice is at best the exclusion of outsiders, and at worst an expression of dodgy blood-and-soil ethnic nationalism. They’re a barrier to communication and an irritation to the vast majority of the population, who are made to feel like uncultured aliens in their own land."Propagandists against Gaelic culture and language have been calling it obsolete, archaic etc. for centuries. Just as the British did with countless other languages and cultures around the world. This was based on psuedo scientific racism and the belief that the Anglo Saxon race and its culture was superior to all others. He uses the old 0.9% figure but never makes any mention as to how the figures ended up so low. I am guessing he knows very little about Gaelic, or any other language, when he suggests the main reason for speaking it is to annoy others. He is an ignoramus as all bigots are. The line within his puerile rant "replacing Highlanders with sheep" is especially stupid. Replace Highlanders with Gaelic speakers and you might begin to see what I mean. Rev is a supremacist for the English language and culture. Basically against multi culturalism then. A British (cultural nationalist) really You couldn't make it up.

Not only that, he is a child. Of course he blocked you when you didn't agree with him. Donald Mackenzie.

The SNP has plenty of MSPs and MPs who are strong advocates of Gaelic. Rev Stu's opinions on the matter will not change that. Nor will the absurd conflation of Bigotry for his clumsy and OTT dismissal of that cause.

The crux of the matter is if you have a strong opinion on a subject you can't possibly expect everyone to agree with you.

Thus, every time one of these blogger 'dramas' appears people gleefully leap off into their own hobby horse to have a pop.

I don't agree with Stu on Gaelic and I don't agree with him on polling. Life goes on.

You form your own opinions from a variety of sources because if there's one thing the out of touch and biased MSM have shown us in scotland, it's that you can't afford to let someone else do all of your thinking for you.

As for the actual subject, I knew Rev Stu was was going to push MoE for the polling on the US elections from the off because he said as much. Again, I didn't agree with it then and I don't now.

To say that the fault always lies with people who don't know how to interpret polls is an easy answer to simply shift the blame to those establishment pundits who admittedly don't know their arse from their elbow.

For sure, they could have used a modicum of common sense for once after Brexit and last years GE, but the truth is polling has taken yet another battering and the US election has once again proven just how foolish it is to base everything on polling and polling alone.

The pollsters only consolation is that Betting looks even more ridiculous to rely on as any sort of predictive guide though they will of course shift the blame straight back on to pollsters because who the f**k wants to admit their own failings in the cold light of day?

Long story short, use polling as a very, very basic and rough guide to current standings. Far better to use polling as a more reliable guide to BIG shifts in opinion and long term trends.

If you rely on polling or betting for small leads and tight contests then you've only yourself to blame when it all goes tits up.

Actual concrete results matter a hell of a lot more and always will.

So when you get actual electoral/referenda results on a big enough scale you dig into those for the most meaingful and usefu answers.

Canvassing, public meetings, reputable surveying, etc also have a massive part to play. You need to do as much as possible as close as possible to the people you represent or you always run the danger of looking as clueless and out of touch as the westminster establishment media and pundit class.

Stating the obvious, but there's no set margin of error on opinion polls.

I remember having to work out the errors for chemistry experiments at University. That was real margins of error which could be multiplied, or not, giving a final range .

For opinion polls, each has a margin of error compared to the actual result. The 3% which gets endlessly quoted is the chance of a single poll being batshit mental. NOT the possible difference between the poll and reality.

That's why polls are just a bit of fun and never to be relied upon. There is no real science behind them. People lie. People give the answers you want. Or they think you want. Or they go along with the majority as part of the herd. Or they've been intimidated by a hate mob calling them racists and won't give a non-PC answer.

You can only ever know after the event if your polls were anywhere near the truth. By which time it's too late.

Yes there is. First of all, you get the 3% as a general standard. Pretty easy to get to 2%. The 3% is each way on each candidate in a two way race . 5% is the "batshit crazy" so for twenty polls you get one outside the margin. James is mostly right. If the final is 48.4 to 46.8, which is where we are headed, and you conduct 20 seperate polls, 19 should have candidate A at 45 to 52%. 19 should have B at 43.5 to 50%. As james said, they should cluster just like your chem results. Political science is an "art" but this accepting races off by 7 routinely, especially as they almost always understate one group - conservatives _ is ridiculous. In the US, there is substantial evidence of a movement by conservatives to advocate lying on polls.

A little off topic, I know, but when you said he was not a bigot I just had to reply.Oh, and Gaelic culture is not about blood. You can come from anywhere and be of any race (not that race is anything more than a cultural invention with no biological basis anyway) and be a Gael. Gaels are people who speak Gaelic that is all. There have been Gaels from lots of different ethnic backgrounds and 'races' etc. It is inclusive. It is just a cultural term for people who speak and take part in the Gaelic language and culture. Donald Mackenzie.

Absolutely, David. Whether the word 'Mori' is spelt with capital letters or not is, as you so correctly stated, a trivial and utterly unimportant point that is of no relevance to anything, and of no interest to anyone but yourself.

Stuart Campbell has opinions and is not to be crossed. It is the nature of the beast. He cannot differentiate between friends and foes. Nor can he distinguish between a good cause - independence - and bad causes, like blaming the wrong people for Hillsborough or the demise of Gaelic. It is perhaps fortunate for him that he found a niché in the Scottish Independence camp, because he has been a star here. Does a huge job in calling the press to account, but perhaps a victim of the lurve he gets btl? It might make you think you were omnipotent.

No-one is omnipotent. (I thought Nate Silver was and see how that ended up ;-))

As a graduate in marketing who focussed on quantitative marketing research in his honours year, and with many years experience in the market research and political arenas, may I thank you for an excellent explanation of margin of error.

Quantitative social research techniques are a little-studied topic among most political commentators, but the introductory texts at least should be compulsory reading before opinionating on opinion polling.

Anon : I have to say I'm baffled by what you have just said. That Wiki article entirely bears out my own argument, and contradicts Stuart's. If you think the opposite is true, could you please give some quotes as examples? I'm at a complete loss as to what you're getting at.

1. It would seem so, young persons are not taking up landlines relying entirely on cellphones and the internet. Since it is much easier on a cellphone to run apps that can for eg block any calls from someone not in your address book polling this group is problematic. It isn't just the young, since you can pay for a cellphone through topups they are favoured by the poor who might not have the credit rating or regular income to sustain a contract. Then you have the internet companies closing their panels meaning they slowly get less and less representative. Oh and many women restrict their phones to avoid harassment. So that is four groups hard to poll.

2. See above and you can theoretically weight for anything but the more you have to do this the less statistically accurate your poll will be since you are assuming views.

Agreed James that the 3% or whatever applies just to each single poll. A group of polls should get closer if they are as accurate as claimed. It seems fairly obvious that Trump's vote was systematically under-reported either because the sampling was not representative, there were shy Trump supporters who did not want to admit their sympathies, or deliberate deception. Not illegal. Poll credibility is damaged.

The final result was so close it would not have been predictable anyway, but you are right the polls got it wrong. No point in quarrelling with Stu, we are all on the same side.

Sadly we seem now to be in a place where lying to the electorate on a huge scale (Better Together, Brexit, Trump) has no penalty and no come-back. There does not seem to be any critical examination of what campaigners say in the media. It does democracy no favours.

3 points. The standard error refers to the likelihood/probability that if the poll was conducted again they would get the same answer i.e. that their polling has been accurately conducted within the margin of Standard Error - not that they have predicted the result to within that error margin.

Second, internet polls, telephone polls are not truly random as they select from a particular sample of the population i.e. those who have telephones and internet and who are available.

Third, trying to have a sensible discussion on Twitter is pointless and stupid.

The Britnat si considers Scotland a colony and calls scottish people "jocks", advocates arming Leave campaigners, armed militias in every workplace and armed insurrection, claimed Jo Cox's husband was a fascist, uses racial and ethnic slurs while claiming they're not derogatory, pretends to be Labour (badly) while espousing far-right racist hate-speech, praises Theresa May and the tories and displays a perverted poisonous obsession with Scotland's First Minister & her predecessor.

The ultra-right-wing authoritarian colonial mouthpiece can trot off snivelling back to its overlords at the Daily Suppress whenever it's finished arguing with itself.

Wouldn't that also work the other way round, though? If the GOP think they can't win, wouldn't that depress their vote? And if the Dems think they have a change of winning big, wouldn't they turn out to ensure that happens?

Sigh. I didn't block you for disagreeing with me. I blocked you because I don't tolerate anyone making assertions and then demanding that *I* go and find their evidence for them. As it says on my Twitter bio, I block for stupid, not for dissent.

"I blocked you because I don't tolerate anyone making assertions and then demanding that *I* go and find their evidence for them"

Yes, you said that at the time, and it was a self-evidently bogus reason. In many ways, your own line of argument was more dependent on exit poll data than mine was, because you were trying to use the possibility of ultra-late swing as a get-out clause. If ultra-late swing really did occur, it would plainly have shown up in exit polls, and you should have been able to demonstrate that. Instead, you curiously decided the onus was entirely upon me, and that if I didn't instantly supply you with the data, it somehow demonstrated that I was wrong and you were right. Bit bloody convenient, I must say. I strongly suspect you did a search as soon as I invited you to, and saw the same numbers that I did. It didn't exactly require hours of "research", as you put it - simply typing the words "trump exit polls wrong" would take you straight to the link I supplied in this blogpost.

"And BTW, I notice that in this lengthy post you STILL haven't managed to provide the US exit polls that you insisted proved your point."

Look, with all due respect, it's not my fault if you can't even be bothered reading the blogpost properly. The link is there, in the penultimate paragraph - all I can suggest is that you take another look.

The Britnat si considers Scotland a colony and calls scottish people "jocks", advocates arming Leave campaigners, armed militias in every workplace and armed insurrection, claimed Jo Cox's husband was a fascist, uses racial and ethnic slurs while claiming they're not derogatory, pretends to be Labour (badly) while espousing far-right racist hate-speech, praises Theresa May and the tories and displays a perverted poisonous obsession with Scotland's First Minister & her predecessor.

The ultra-right-wing authoritarian colonial mouthpiece can trot off snivelling back to its overlords at the Daily Suppress whenever it's finished arguing with itself.

Sadly the good Rev Stu has this idea that he is some sort of political Nostradamus and has begun to see the world through this prism and all things must bend to allow this delusion of his to flourish.

This statistically fairly literate Bioscientist agrees with you James. Even with very noisy data some sort of mean should be discernible with something approaching a normal distribution. If the distribution is not normal you either have a big sampling problem or your issues are closer to being discrete and Chi Squares should be reached for.

When you get something wrong McTernan will be justified in setting up #revstupredicts.

McTernan hasn't been assigned that hashtag because he got "something wrong". Literally every major prediction he's made in the last few years - almost always accompanied by assertions about how it's a 100% nailed-on cert because he's such an expert - has fallen on its face.

As has been pointed in the US, exit polls are a tad more reliable than all others? People are asked how they voted as they leave the voting station and in the past exit poll have been proven to be spot on, at least in the States. In the swing States exit polls indicated that Clinton had won them, some narrowly some by 4 or 5 percent. Trump cruised the swing States which in iself was suspicious.I would point out that there were no exit polls at the Scottish Referendum. Perhaps 'the powers that be' didn't want a similar discrepancy to be presented after the result was in?

Actually, exit polls- or the lack thereof- is a huge part of the problem.there used to be lots of them , everywhete, and local reporters from competing papers and tv stations/ networks fanned out so you had lots of data. Everyone talked at polling places. Now we get increasingly small, UNCOMPETITIVE exit polling, which covers very little of the US. In addition, lots of assumptions based on election nigjt returns when literally millions of ballots are still being counted. Plus , lots of people refuse exit polling which was unheard of years ago. This whole th8ng is a huge problem.

Sad to hear that things are less than amicable, I follow you both and hold you both in high regard! You James for polls analysis etc as I find it very difficult to get my head around that stuff, and Stuart for his impeccable analysis on the facts and calling out the lies of the so called media.

So, I hope things can be mended soon. It is good for us all, to keep things on a mature, respectful level at all times. Not easy, but not impossible!

Keep doing what you are doing James, you do an excellent job, thank you.

Something that hasn't been touched on much is the endless abuse of polling to try and drive opinion instead of reflecting it.

Guess what, that shit was always going to have blowback down the line.

Every single time political parties and media lackeys pushed their own narratives with a commissioned poll, and every single time the pollsters 'relaxed' their standards to accommodate ludicrously framed questions, push polling and other extremely dubious practices and statistical massaging, they diluted and devalued the utility of polling.

Nor is there any sign of that crap stopping, quite the reverse.

Now that polling has taken yet another bettering expect yet more desperate attempts to misuse it and even more lax standards from an industry desperate for business.

Even if you still inexplicably had total faith in polling as a completely reliable tool it is undeniable that the negative perception of polling itself and the establishment and media class who most rely on it will continue to pollute and skew their own results.

POLLS gives you Nat sis something to console yerselves with. You are losing the argument for staying in the corrupt EU like you did with the Celik Tiger, Iceland and Scandinavia. Do try and have some original policies and a currency to convince the Scottish people Independence is viable and stop crawlin tae Herman. Or just go hame tae think again.

The Britnat si considers Scotland a colony and calls scottish people "jocks", advocates arming Leave campaigners, armed militias in every workplace and armed insurrection, claimed Jo Cox's husband was a fascist, uses racial and ethnic slurs while claiming they're not derogatory, pretends to be Labour (badly) while espousing far-right racist hate-speech, praises Theresa May and the tories and displays a perverted poisonous obsession with Scotland's First Minister & her predecessor.

The ultra-right-wing authoritarian colonial mouthpiece can trot off snivelling back to its overlords at the Daily Suppress whenever it's finished arguing with itself.

Something that hasn't been touched on much is the endless abuse of polling to try and drive opinion instead of reflecting it.

Guess what, that shit was always going to have blowback down the line.

Every single time political parties and media lackeys pushed their own narratives with a commissioned poll, and every single time the pollsters 'relaxed' their standards to accommodate ludicrously framed questions, push polling and other extremely dubious practices and statistical massaging, they diluted and devalued the utility of polling.

Nor is there any sign of that crap stopping, quite the reverse.

Now that polling has taken yet another bettering expect yet more desperate attempts to misuse it and even more lax standards from an industry desperate for business.

Even if you still inexplicably had total faith in polling as a completely reliable tool it is undeniable that the negative perception of polling itself and the establishment and media class who most rely on it will continue to pollute and skew their own results.

The Britnat si considers Scotland a colony and calls scottish people "jocks", advocates arming Leave campaigners, armed militias in every workplace and armed insurrection, claimed Jo Cox's husband was a fascist, uses racial and ethnic slurs while claiming they're not derogatory, pretends to be Labour (badly) while espousing far-right racist hate-speech, praises Theresa May and the tories and displays a perverted poisonous obsession with Scotland's First Minister & her predecessor.

The ultra-right-wing authoritarian colonial mouthpiece can trot off snivelling back to its overlords at the Daily Suppress whenever it's finished arguing with itself.

Something that hasn't been touched on much is the endless abuse of polling to try and drive opinion instead of reflecting it.

Guess what, that shit was always going to have blowback down the line.

Every single time political parties and media lackeys pushed their own narratives with a commissioned poll, and every single time the pollsters 'relaxed' their standards to accommodate ludicrously framed questions, push polling and other extremely dubious practices and statistical massaging, they diluted and devalued the utility of polling.

Nor is there any sign of that crap stopping, quite the reverse.

Now that polling has taken yet another bettering expect yet more desperate attempts to misuse it and even more lax standards from an industry desperate for business.

Even if you still inexplicably had total faith in polling as a completely reliable tool it is undeniable that the negative perception of polling itself and the establishment and media class who most rely on it will continue to pollute and skew their own results.

Thing is that EoM isn't something an opinion can change. They're a measure of how close plus or minus to an end result you can get. A single poll on it's own isn't that much of a problem. It's when you get everyone being wrong in the same direction that you need to question their methodology.

To make things even worse the upsurge in postal voting introduces a legacy effect into polls based on intransigence on the part of those who will always vote for a particular party's candidate and the state of play at a particular point in the campaign. In the case of the independence campaign that gave a definite advantage to the No side. It also makes close exit polls less than useful as by definition they only count votes cast on the day.

Add to that, as some have already said, the Delphic nature of polls which is partly why some are published in order to guide discussion. However another reason for encouraging postal voting might be that if you can sample ballots as they come in you can gauge the reaction to the ongoing campaign of your favoured candidate.

It is called politics unfortunately the Jock Nat si party have failed in this and having a sense of humour. Farage has a sense of humour and that is why we have Brexit. He is not a crawler to the EU like the Joke Nat sis traitors are. The Nat sis would sell out Scotland to the EU simply because they hate the English.

The Britnat si considers Scotland a colony and calls scottish people "jocks", advocates arming Leave campaigners, armed militias in every workplace and armed insurrection, claimed Jo Cox's husband was a fascist, uses racial and ethnic slurs while claiming they're not derogatory, pretends to be Labour (badly) while espousing far-right racist hate-speech, praises Theresa May and the tories and displays a perverted poisonous obsession with Scotland's First Minister & her predecessor.

The ultra-right-wing authoritarian colonial mouthpiece can trot off snivelling back to its overlords at the Daily Suppress whenever it's finished arguing with itself.

There's certainly plenty of humour in watching the UK Government pretend the rulers of the world take any notice of them, Theresa waiting desperately for her "phone call" like an unattractive 16-year-old on prom night.

I'm doing a Maths/Economics degree which has a strong statistical element.

Random errors should cancel out when averaged over a large number of polls. The more polls the closer the average should be to the actual result. Otherwise there is bias in the polls rather than random error.

The thing is, Stu is usually right. He also gets irritable when he thinks the other person isn't getting it. This is a lethal combination on the (relatively rare, it has to be said) times when he isn't right.

I've never seen him block anyone because he's realised he's been wrong. If he realises early he's usually perfectly fine about it. Same if the disagreement is really a matter of opinion. Sometimes though he paints himself into a corner without quite realising it, and then the proverbial starts to hit the fan.

If he realises he's wrong at that stage he usually just wanders off, doesn't reply or announces that he's bored with the discussion and will you stop going on about it please. Best to back off at that point, trust me on this.

If he totally fails to get it, like with this one, I think it's a choice. Is his overall contribution sufficient to cut him a bit of slack and let it go, or do you want blocked? He's not going to cut you any slack because of anything you've done for him in the past, or however well you've previously got on, so it's up to you. Leave it even though you're right, or stick to your guns?

Personally I'll forgive him a lot simply for the Wee Blue Book. But there are moments when I'd happily strangle him with the bloody thing.

The man is becoming a victim of his own success. He believes that everything he prints in true, and that criticism of his arguments means that you are an enemy worthy of being ignored, or called to account by his fans.

No-one, not our host, nor I, nor Stu, are infallible.

Pretending that what you write always is the truth and that asking you to support it is just another form of denial.

Barring a fellow Nationalist for asking is frankly mean spirited and a tad egotistical.

But, with Stu, you get what you get.

I am not alone in thinking that his comments on media are well worth the admission. It is just the pop-corn that is a bit shit.

More than two in five Nat sis would prefer a hard border with England rather than brexit according too the Herald. I wonder how many of the Nat sis will keep their British Passport! How would we move our exports to the EU! Could we afford the tariffs via England! And what about the tariffs for imports to Scotland via England!

The Britnat si considers Scotland a colony and calls scottish people "jocks", advocates arming Leave campaigners, armed militias in every workplace and armed insurrection, claimed Jo Cox's husband was a fascist, uses racial and ethnic slurs while claiming they're not derogatory, pretends to be Labour (badly) while espousing far-right racist hate-speech, praises Theresa May and the tories and displays a perverted poisonous obsession with Scotland's First Minister & her predecessor.

The ultra-right-wing authoritarian colonial mouthpiece can trot off snivelling back to its overlords at the Daily Suppress whenever it's finished arguing with itself.

The Britnat si considers Scotland a colony and calls scottish people "jocks", advocates arming Leave campaigners, armed militias in every workplace and armed insurrection, claimed Jo Cox's husband was a fascist, uses racial and ethnic slurs while claiming they're not derogatory, pretends to be Labour (badly) while espousing far-right racist hate-speech, praises Theresa May and the tories and displays a perverted poisonous obsession with Scotland's First Minister & her predecessor.

The ultra-right-wing authoritarian colonial mouthpiece can trot off snivelling back to its overlords at the Daily Suppress whenever it's finished arguing with itself.

The Britnat si considers Scotland a colony and calls scottish people "jocks", advocates arming Leave campaigners, armed militias in every workplace and armed insurrection, claimed Jo Cox's husband was a fascist, uses racial and ethnic slurs while claiming they're not derogatory, pretends to be Labour (badly) while espousing far-right racist hate-speech, praises Theresa May and the tories and displays a perverted poisonous obsession with Scotland's First Minister & her predecessor.

The ultra-right-wing authoritarian colonial mouthpiece can trot off snivelling back to its overlords at the Daily Suppress whenever it's finished arguing with itself.

You Nat sis do not have the ability to nationalise the railways never mind running a country. Humza and his fellow Nat si knobs should resign. We need to rid ourselves of waste. Bulldoze the Scottish Parliament. JSA for the wasters.

The Britnat si considers Scotland a colony and calls scottish people "jocks", advocates arming Leave campaigners, armed militias in every workplace and armed insurrection, claimed Jo Cox's husband was a fascist, uses racial and ethnic slurs while claiming they're not derogatory, pretends to be Labour (badly) while espousing far-right racist hate-speech, praises Theresa May and the tories and displays a perverted poisonous obsession with Scotland's First Minister & her predecessor.

The ultra-right-wing authoritarian colonial mouthpiece can trot off snivelling back to its overlords at the Daily Suppress whenever it's finished arguing with itself.

The Britnat si considers Scotland a colony and calls scottish people "jocks", advocates arming Leave campaigners, armed militias in every workplace and armed insurrection, claimed Jo Cox's husband was a fascist, uses racial and ethnic slurs while claiming they're not derogatory, pretends to be Labour (badly) while espousing far-right racist hate-speech, praises Theresa May and the tories and displays a perverted poisonous obsession with Scotland's First Minister & her predecessor.

The ultra-right-wing authoritarian colonial mouthpiece can trot off snivelling back to its overlords at the Daily Suppress whenever it's finished arguing with itself.

A good number of polls towards the end showed that Hillary's lead had collapsed to low single digits. She will lead in the popular vote by 1 or 2 percent when all the votes are counted. So, the polls were reasonably accurate. What you really need in America is 50 separate state level tracker polls. But even then, many states are so ridiculously close that a slight breeze could flip them.

That's a misleading comment, Aldo. (I'm sure no-one will faint with amazement at that revelation.) Hillary Clinton's lead in the polls was increasing, not decreasing, by the end of the campaign. Most of the final polls had her around 4 points ahead. As I said in the blogpost, if that had been the actual result, it's highly unlikely Trump would have won the electoral college.

As for state polls, they exist, and they pointed to a clear Clinton win in the electoral college.

But many of the state polls that sites like RCP were relying on to build their electoral college projections were old. It was assumed the 'big blue' rust belt states would stay blue. So not much polling was done in them. More frequent polling might have shown the movement towards Trump in those states.

The Britnat si considers Scotland a colony and calls scottish people "jocks", advocates arming Leave campaigners, armed militias in every workplace and armed insurrection, claimed Jo Cox's husband was a fascist, uses racial and ethnic slurs while claiming they're not derogatory, pretends to be Labour (badly) while espousing far-right racist hate-speech, praises Theresa May and the tories and displays a perverted poisonous obsession with Scotland's First Minister & her predecessor.

The ultra-right-wing authoritarian colonial mouthpiece can trot off snivelling back to its overlords at the Daily Suppress whenever it's finished arguing with itself.

The Britnat si considers Scotland a colony and calls scottish people "jocks", advocates arming Leave campaigners, armed militias in every workplace and armed insurrection, claimed Jo Cox's husband was a fascist, uses racial and ethnic slurs while claiming they're not derogatory, pretends to be Labour (badly) while espousing far-right racist hate-speech, praises Theresa May and the tories and displays a perverted poisonous obsession with Scotland's First Minister & her predecessor.

The ultra-right-wing authoritarian colonial mouthpiece can trot off snivelling back to its overlords at the Daily Suppress whenever it's finished arguing with itself.

Strangely enough I've not seen any mention in the MSM of the fact that Britain First were part of the Better Together campaign. Several articles from the Guardian talking about Mair being a terrorist but forgetting that he was one of theirs. J Cox Mp killed by the enemy of her enemy. Tragedy, NOT!

The Britnat si considers Scotland a colony and calls scottish people "jocks", advocates arming Leave campaigners, armed militias in every workplace and armed insurrection, claimed Jo Cox's husband was a fascist, uses racial and ethnic slurs while claiming they're not derogatory, pretends to be Labour (badly) while espousing far-right racist hate-speech, praises Theresa May and the tories and displays a perverted poisonous obsession with Scotland's First Minister & her predecessor.

The ultra-right-wing authoritarian colonial mouthpiece can trot off snivelling back to its overlords at the Daily Suppress whenever it's finished arguing with itself.

The Britnat si considers Scotland a colony and calls scottish people "jocks", advocates arming Leave campaigners, armed militias in every workplace and armed insurrection, claimed Jo Cox's husband was a fascist, uses racial and ethnic slurs while claiming they're not derogatory, pretends to be Labour (badly) while espousing far-right racist hate-speech, praises Theresa May and the tories and displays a perverted poisonous obsession with Scotland's First Minister & her predecessor.

The ultra-right-wing authoritarian colonial mouthpiece can trot off snivelling back to its overlords at the Daily Suppress whenever it's finished arguing with itself.

The Britnat si considers Scotland a colony and calls scottish people "jocks", advocates arming Leave campaigners, armed militias in every workplace and armed insurrection, claimed Jo Cox's husband was a fascist, uses racial and ethnic slurs while claiming they're not derogatory, pretends to be Labour (badly) while espousing far-right racist hate-speech, praises Theresa May and the tories and displays a perverted poisonous obsession with Scotland's First Minister & her predecessor.

The ultra-right-wing authoritarian colonial mouthpiece can trot off snivelling back to its overlords at the Daily Suppress whenever it's finished arguing with itself.

Your silly repetitive post is an avoidance of addressing political issues and progressive policies. You are the type of Nat sis that lived in a Scottish village with kerosene lamps pre hydro electric. Just an erse.

The Britnat si considers Scotland a colony and calls scottish people "jocks", advocates arming Leave campaigners, armed militias in every workplace and armed insurrection, claimed Jo Cox's husband was a fascist, uses racial and ethnic slurs while claiming they're not derogatory, pretends to be Labour (badly) while espousing far-right racist hate-speech, praises Theresa May and the tories and displays a perverted poisonous obsession with Scotland's First Minister & her predecessor.

The ultra-right-wing authoritarian colonial mouthpiece can trot off snivelling back to its overlords at the Daily Suppress whenever it's finished arguing with itself.

The Britnat si considers Scotland a colony and calls scottish people "jocks", advocates arming Leave campaigners, armed militias in every workplace and armed insurrection, claimed Jo Cox's husband was a fascist, uses racial and ethnic slurs while claiming they're not derogatory, pretends to be Labour (badly) while espousing far-right racist hate-speech, praises Theresa May and the tories, wishes suicide on anyone disagreeing with it, and displays a perverted poisonous obsession with Scotland's First Minister & her predecessor.

The ultra-right-wing authoritarian colonial mouthpiece can trot off snivelling back to its overlords at the Daily Suppress whenever it's finished arguing with itself.

The Britnat si considers Scotland a colony and calls scottish people "jocks", advocates arming Leave campaigners, armed militias in every workplace and armed insurrection, claimed Jo Cox's husband was a fascist, uses racial and ethnic slurs while claiming they're not derogatory, pretends to be Labour (badly) while espousing far-right racist hate-speech, praises Theresa May and the tories, wishes suicide on anyone disagreeing with it, and displays a perverted poisonous obsession with Scotland's First Minister & her predecessor.

The ultra-right-wing authoritarian colonial mouthpiece can trot off snivelling back to its overlords at the Daily Suppress whenever it's finished arguing with itself.

This is a testimony that I will tell to every one to hear. I have been married four 4years and on the fifth year of my marriage, another woman had a spell to take my lover away from me and my husband left me and the kids and we have suffered for 2years until I met a post where this great Prophet Success have helped someone and I decided to give her a try to help me bring my lover back home and believe me I just send my picture to her and that of my husband and after 48 hours as she have told me, I saw a car drove into the house and behold it was my husband and he have come to me and the kids and that is why I am happy to make every one of you in similar to met with this great Prophet Success and have your lover back to your self. Her email: PROPHECTSUCCESS@YAHOO.COM or add her on hangout now PROPHECTSUCCESS@GMAIL.COM.